


Kindness

by corellianred



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Big Bang, F/M, Gen, The Calling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 14:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1608827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corellianred/pseuds/corellianred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders could scarcely believe his fortune at being allowed to leave Kirkwall with his skin intact-- except now he hears the faint stirrings of his Calling. He knows he must leave the Free Marches immediately. But things have a way of bringing him back to his old brothers and sisters of the Grey Wardens...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Related art piece: The Call of the Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/49928) by LadyofFellan. 



> For the Dragon Age Big Bang, May 2014. ENORMOUS thanks to LadyofFellan for the art, which is simply gorgeous. Check it out on the link above. And thanks to the mods of DABB for organising it all, and the other participants for all the delicious fic and art! This was my first Big Bang and I am really proud to have been a part of such a wonderful thing.

**Anders**

 

Blood. 

Blood everywhere, the smell of it so thick in the air that you can taste the coppery tang of it in the back of your throat.

Burning flesh, tearing flesh, rotting flesh.

Grey skin, hard and hot — hotter than any healthy creature’s flesh. Hot the way that someone who is burned by fever is hot.  There are tumours underneath the skin, and worse. Unnatural strength. Endless hunger.

Its hands — _my_ hands. A twisted piece of metal held tight in those hands. A tall stone statue made beautiful with the wings and the face of the Old Ones.

The screams. No language. Just the hunger, this _longing_ , poured out in a long wailing note: _where are you?_

I am disoriented. I don’t know this place, and yet I do. I thought it was underground, but now I see the shadows of trees. I see smoke and sand. I smell blood and soil and the skin of a thousand brothers. I see a roof of stone, and then it is gone. I see a sky filled with stars and terrible burning lights. Behind me, that wail — and the answer from far away, that beauty that sings from deep in the earth, and I know I must follow, I _must—_

And now I recognise it for what it is.

It’s a call. 

A calling. 

_My_ calling.

The worst part is that after the realisation hits me, I don’t wake up right away.

* * *

 

Three months it’s been. Three long months now, though perhaps a little longer. I have been remiss in keeping a record, with nothing to write with. I think about the journals I used to keep, all nestled alongside each other on that little makeshift shelf back in my little clinic. Surely they are all ash now.

I once overheard an elven trader in the main square of a market town, telling her merchant friend that the templars of Kirkwall were barely able to maintain order after what happened.

No, not _happened_. After _what I did_. I can say this, at least, to myself.

I waited, with my breath as thick as lead in my throat, for her to start describing me.

But… nothing. News of fighting, and a closure of the docks, and of a shortage of some of the goods she wanted to trade. Roads, she said, were somewhat lawless. Apostates, as usual, to be detained. A search, yes, but she seemed to have no details on the man they sought.

Other news, other people, other places, and I stitch their words into a patchwork of rumour and story.

The templars’ Knight-Commander dead, killed in some terrifying battle. The First Enchanter turning into a blood-soaked demon. Floods of refugees, their homes destroyed by fire, all huddling in taverns or dancing-halls or anywhere that a bedroll and a blanket can fit. Some trickling out, ready to bid farewell to that city at last. Some stories about a mage gone mad — and perhaps these ones are not so far from the truth.

The Viscount is no more, and the Champion seeks blood, they say — the Champion, and when I hear that name my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and guilt turns my bowels to water. 

_The Champion._

I had been resolved to choose my own fate

_our fate, our joint fate, we both needed that_

and to walk into the fires, or to await the sword of the templars, open-armed and ready to meet their fury.

I was ready, but she was there.

Oh, Marian, you were never supposed to be there to see it, to see _me_. 

And yet I should have known she would be there. That city and she are tied up in one another.

I’d written her a letter, a dozen letters, all the same thing said in a dozen different ways. I wrote them on pages I’d torn from her books, my own inked words running across the printed ones. I wrote them on scraps of paper I took from the back of my grimoire and on the cheap, thin parchment I used to wrap powders and salves for my patients. I wrote about why, and I wrote that I was sorry, and I wrote about why we did this thing without saying goodbye. Every word I scrawled out was an apology and a manifesto, an explanation, because I know how desperately frustrated she is when she doesn’t understand _why_ , and if there was nothing else I could give her then at least there could be an answer to that _._ I left them all folded up in a neat pile in my clinic. I expected her to come looking among my things, once she figured it out. Maybe for the templars to turn it over, to read every word for some hidden meaning.

No, she was not supposed to see me there, because for all that resolve, for all that I knew we were _right_ — well, I am a weak man.

But she was there to see it all. To watch, the way that Orsino and Meredith watched. And once it was all done, when I thought it would be well and truly over, for a moment I believed she might even wield the knife herself

_yes, she is not so different to you… that same fire burns in her, the same sense of justice_

and yet, when I turned away to await her blade, it did not come.

“Just go,” she ground out through her smoke-filled throat, her tears.

I had been ready to die that day.

But when she said this, I knew that I had to run. 

* * *

No Warden ever stops feeling the call of the taint, not completely. The further away from the Joining I got, the less vivid and frequent were the dreams. The first ones were enough to have me turning over the contents of my stomach before I had even fully untangled myself from my bedroll — so detailed, so visceral. To think that I believed I knew what violence was. 

Léonie would be beside us every time, just to be there and to reassure us. It gets easier, she promised. Nathaniel had borne it with his typical grace, which was to say none at all. Velanna suffered in silence. Oghren, Sigrun — they cannot dream, and yet they’d still wake with a cry on their lips. 

Even after my deal with Justice they came, just occasionally. Whispers, mostly. Worse when we entered the Deep Roads. The darkspawn never go away, you know, even at the end of any Blight — they just turn their attention elsewhere, drawn to the dark and deep parts in their ceaseless searching for the Old Gods. They are not thinking of us, and after a time we’re no longer really thinking of them, either. 

But they never really stop. They just… lessen. Any sane man would have nightmares about unstoppable creatures from the deepest parts of the earth. For Wardens, this is more like a memory of something you are. Not a dream, but a prophecy, except the kind that you know will always come true.

* * *

Marian gave me my life. Against every expectation she did this. So, no, I could not squander this, and instead, I ran.

I had nothing, just my staff and the clothes on my back, because I had never planned to leave Kirkwall at all, much less survive this long in the Free Marches. In the confusion and panic all over Kirkwall I went into the nearest open house — only good homes in Hightown, by the Chantry, of course — and took whatever I could see that seemed like it could be of use. A knife and pan, some vegetables in a small, worn market-day bag, a little folding razor, a thick woollen coat that yielded a few forgotten coppers left in one of its pockets. The wash basket yielded some thick breeches, and a shirt that fit loosely around my chest and skimmed too close to my knuckles; the man who lived there must have been only a little taller than me, a little broader. If only I had thought to take more of his clothing. I have tried to steal from many a laundry line but have had such poor luck since.

There are things you learn when you’re on the run. Gather the hulls of a few fresh walnuts and boil them and you have enough dye to stain anything; use it to stain your hair and skin in different shades of brown, the kind of ground-in brown that tells of months spent on the road or in fields, the kind that people don’t look too closely at. Push your jaw forward and try not to open your mouth too much, and you can disguise your voice and your accent enough to sound like a different man entirely. Do something with your hair — I took that razor and sheared off my hair until it stuck up all over my head in thick uneven clumps. I let my beard grow in, the rough inch-long style of a field labourer. 

And as for coin, there are some things that a man can do for those who have no need to ask so much. I have helped farmers harvest their summer crops, cut their grass to make hay, slaughter their animals. I have hauled fishermen’s catches from their ships and I have gutted each of the fish, every single stinking one. One week I laboured with a gang of men to build a new wall along the edge of a field, back-breaking work in the height of summer

_we are an instrument of something greater, we are meant for more than this_

to make mud-bricks from grass and dirt and the foul-smelling water from a nearby sulphuric spring. I have gone into taverns at roadsides and sung bawdy songs, the ones that are the same almost everywhere you go. Some are the songs that I learned in the Hanged Man and the Blooming Rose; some are Fereldan — there is no shortage of down-on-his-luck men of Ferelden on the Marches’ roads. It isn’t paying work, but it gets you a hot meal and an ale sometimes from a good-natured patron, and that means that a handful of coppers that I can keep in my pocket for another day. On the worst days I go into villages and beg. 

I sleep in barns if I’m lucky, under trees if I’m not. Sometimes I sleep during the day, knowing that it means I can avoid the hungry wolves and other night-time creatures. I have no staff now — it would be suicide to carry one these days, to even _hint_ at the possibility that this dirty, careworn man who’s visiting the village might be a dangerous apostate on the run.  I’m not even sure if I have the proper command of magic any more. Even in the Fade I stay silent and ask no one or nothing for counsel, and I am left mostly alone

_but not for long — never for long_

with my dreams in return.

Oh, all that resolve, all that confidence — it was enough to see me all the way to the gates of the Chantry, and a little further. But all that has abandoned me now. 

* * *

This was always going to happen. Thirty years, they said. Maybe some more, maybe fewer. But everyone knows that’s part of the deal — that any Warden who manages to avoid being killed by the sword will eventually hear the Calling one day. You settle your affairs and then you go into the earth, there to have one last journey into the Deep Roads and meet the darkspawn for the last time.

There was just one Calling I saw in Amaranthine before I ran away. He was a gnawed-upon old Nevarran man who was long past his sword-bearing years. He’d come with a party of five or so young Orlesian wardens, bringing correspondence and supplies from the Warden Commander in Val Royeaux.  Léonie greeted him with delight when he arrived and took a particular pride in showing him the beginnings of our rebuilt Order there in poor Ferelden. He liked a cup of wine, maybe two. He took a liking to Amaranthine, Maker alone knew why. A nice old fellow — Henri, his name was. 

And then one day, out of nowhere: the far-off stare, the confusion. For Henri it came on quickly, where all he could do was to sit oddly by a window and stare out into nothingness, alone with some waking vision. By nightfall of the second day his skin had grown tacky with perspiration and his voice ragged with suffering, and the only healing magic I could bring to him was a sedative spell that gave him, if he was lucky, a half-hour’s sleep at a time. 

We sat with him that night — Léonie, two or three of his young Wardens, and I — as he turned and thrashed in twilight.

And sometime just before dawn Henri woke up, looked at us all with clear eyes, and said he would need to leave in the morning.

And that was that. A simple farewell, and then the march to the Deep Roads. His young Orlesian friends returned with empty resignation.

That’s the 'good' death, the noble one. A quick one for Henri. He was lucky.

The bad one, they say, is what happens if you can’t put an end to it before the Blight takes you.

* * *

I was never sure if the joining with Justice was supposed to shorten my lifespan, or if his presence in my body would lengthen it beyond the Calling, just as Kristoff’s poor corpse struggled on. No, neither of us were sure. We had such world-changing plans, the kind that more lent themselves to a noble death at the sword,  long before the natural — or unnatural — causes could take hold. I had been young and healthy that day and determined to burn out brightly. I never expected to feel so unspeakably old

_eternal, now_

and worn-out.

What will happen to that part of me (oh — us, really) that was not born of mortals? We are so tightly woven now. 

Will he (we?) occupy this body even after that human part of me is gone?

Will there even be anything left for that spirit to hold onto, once I take that last long walk into the dark?

And how, _how_ do I get there? There are entrances to the Deep Roads near Kirkwall, though the old maps I had for them long ago are well and truly gone now. If I were there, would I remember the way to go? It feels so very very long ago. 

But if it’s true that there are men of the Chantry out on the roads, then the risk of being seen… no, that can’t happen. Not even at the end of this strange and miserable journey. I will not allow myself to fall to one of _them._

* * *

Kirkwall is one of the Free Marches’ main ports of trade. But there are the little villages that run along that coast in a long, thin line, all the way west into the Planasene Forests and even further westwards, down towards Orlais — a ragged little trail that’s mostly home to fisheries and minor smuggling operations. Sea passages to anywhere, if you know who to ask and how to ask, and you don’t mind if you’re not travelling like a nobleman.

I am a terrible seaman, but the alternative is worse.

A woman with a small cottage by the entrance to the village — she’s smart, this one, seeing travellers on the road and she knows when there’s the opportunity to show a little hospitality to the weary. I  ask only for a small moment to use the washroom in exchange for a few coppers, and she comes back momentarily with a sliver of hard white Hercinian soap and a rough piece of cloth. Winter is not so far from here and the coastal wind has a bite to it, but I won’t risk trying to warm the water with magic, not even for a second. 

I try to clean myself up somewhat in an attempt to look more like a hardworking man of the trades, and less like a ragged and increasingly worn-out itinerant, and judging by the expression on the woman’s face as I emerge from her washroom, I guess that I’ve made a reasonable job of it. 

I ask her where a man can find work on the Waking Sea, and she tells me to make my way to the little hovel that passes for a public house, down by the waterfront. Four ships are in, she tells me with confidence. They all drink at the same place. More ships all through the week, if none of them are hiring. 

Thank the Maker, I am nothing if not a lucky man, or at least the beneficiary of a great many favourable coincidences. 

I spin a story to one of the captains about wanting to see my old mum in Ferelden before she dies; I’d been there long enough to do a passable imitation of the high country accent, or at least a pastiche that’s good enough to fool a Marcher into thinking that it sounds about right. I tell him I can work for my passage — labour, cleaning, cooking, whatever it is that needs to be done — and I can see that I’m in luck, as his face lights up. His ship’s cook has quit, he says, gone with his wages to drink himself into a stupor — can I cook for thirty men for a week, maybe two, maybe more, if the coin suits? He can offer me a journeyman’s wage only, he says apologetically; if I were to stick around, perhaps he could offer a more equitable share of the pay if I were interested…

I nod, and smile, and make some easy talk about perhaps thinking on it after paying a visit to poor Mother. I tell him that I’ll stay as far as Highever. He is so far in his own cups, and so eager to have anyone take on this thankless task, that even my unconvincing assurances must sound like a brilliant idea to him.

I take my place among his men, early the next day.

And this is how, for the first time in what seems like a hundred long years, I will return to Ferelden’s cold and mud. 

* * *

The men aboard the ship ask little, and so I say little. It is four days along the coast, picking up and dropping off little shipments as far west as Cumberland, and then we’re to make our way across the Waking Sea. Jader, West Hill, Highever, all familiar names from a long-ago past that seems like it belongs to someone else now, some other Anders.

I cook four square meals for each day. When I’m not cooking I’m cleaning, or I’m finding little scraps of time to sleep where I can. I rest poorly, because the dreaming comes again and again, the rolling of the ship a perfect, sickening backdrop to the lurching of my thoughts. I can hold them off sometimes; other times they spring unbidden into the middle of whatever I’m thinking about, and suddenly I’ve got my head over the side of the ship emptying what little is left in my stomach.

The men laugh and make jokes about land-dwelling chaps like myself having to develop sea legs. They pass me ale and old bread and tell fanciful stories, one after the other, tales of their own first days aboard ship that get louder and more spectacular with every tale. They clearly have good intentions, each stomach-turning description seemingly embellished in such a way as to make me feel more at ease with my own ill humour. 

I am grateful for their brotherhood, as fleeting as it is. From somewhere in my memory I dredge up some old tricks I knew from before — spices, flavours, and different ways to combine the same old things. Feels like a thousand years 

_is this your memory? Kristoff’s? that was Aura’s favourite, do you remember?_

ago that I used to cook for myself — and as for my own appetite, it’s gone somewhere else since the dreams began. The galley has a surprisingly decent collection of herbs and other things, all of which seem to be in good shape, including an enormous stock of dried elf root and its leaves. I find out later from a deckhand that this is because the previous cook served the same bland old tubers for every meal, more or less. The elf root I set aside and make a tisane from. It helps keep a few things at bay — nausea, some of the thoughts.

Honest work, done well for people who appreciate your effort. So simple and satisfying, and for awhile I allow myself the small, futile fantasy that perhaps I can learn to live with this, perhaps the thoughts will die back down, perhaps they’re just caused by some unseen darkspawn disturbance that will go away soon. 

But one starry, choppy night I wake from a vision so intense and so _real_ that I only come to when my I’m all the way out of my bunk, halfway to the rail of the ship, and I want so badly to fling myself into the sea just to make the cries _stop…_

“What are you running from, cookie?” a sailor says from behind me, his face lit only by stars and the glow of the pungent leaf that he’s smoking.

I fling my head over the rail and heave a few dry, fruitless times into the blackness overboard and drag in some deep breaths, trying to replace all the blighted air in my lungs with something cleaner. Somewhere behind me I can hear him shift around on his spot, maybe craning his neck to have a better look.

“You ever going to get your sea legs, cookie?”

I offer him a weak grin. “Seems like I’m a slow learner.”

“’S not normal,” he says. “You’ve got something in your blood, perhaps.”

Such a choice of words.

He offers me a mouthful of some spirit he keeps in a flask, sticky and potent, that burns a path through my sinuses and right into my brain, and he grins at the expression I make as I swallow it. “You come see me next time, I’ll give you some more of this,” he says, patting me fraternally on the shoulder. “Cures most things, or kills 'em.”

I can only imagine what has gone into it.

Back belowdecks I stumble into the galley. More elf root, now, mashed up into a sour paste, stirred into some cold water. There’ll be no more sleep for me tonight. 

What a fool I am, to believe that there is anything more that can be done to escape from this fate.

* * *

We arrive at Highever on a warm afternoon with our sails proud and full, and I take my leave of the captain, and my wages, such as they are. It has been so long since I have been in Ferelden, and yet the smell of the air and the sounds are as familiar to me as the day I left Amaranthine. 

Almost as soon as my feet touch land the nagging sensation in the back of my mind gets stronger and more insistent. It’s as though I left some item somewhere else, or forgot to do something important, and my mind keeps wandering away, off into the night, conjuring images of old caves and stone doors and the sweet relief of finally being able to go underground.

The town is quiet and cold, the people who live there sullen and suspicious. Highever is more than a week’s travel to Orzammar, where it’s said the dwarves will give their hospitality to any Grey Warden who seeks passage. But Amaranthine has the entrances I remember so well from my time there, and is only a few days, and I don’t know if I have the time to spare anymore.

I keep my head down and my eyes open. The sun is not so far from setting, and I spend a little coin on some supplies — a bedroll, a little hard tack for the chance that I regain an appetite, a couple of skins of wine, a little bag of dried, powdered deep mushroom. I took a few large handfuls of elf root from the ship; they won’t notice its loss, I expect. Old man from the ship slipped me a small amount of that noxious moonshine of his. 

In the market I catch sight of myself in the reflection of a polished silver platter and completely fail to recognise my own face: streaky hair still dark from a rushed dye job some weeks back, my eyes shadowed, my skin dull and pale. With the part of me that can still call himself a healer, I realise that I haven’t eaten properly in — what? A week, now? 

And sleep?

Back in the Circle, I once saw some young mages being made to stay awake for days at a time, a punishment dreamt up by a particularly sadistic templar. Something about causing any latent possessions to emerge by keeping them away from the Fade. I know from horrible experience of my own that you can go without food for a long while, if you’re healthy. But sleep — well, these mages began to hallucinate just three days into the ordeal.

Me, with my newfound connection to the tainted, I’m already starting to hear the whispers, see the little shadows from the corners of my eyes.

Even though no one should start a journey at nightfall, I can’t bear the thought of waiting any longer. In a forest about three hours’ walk away, I find an old poacher’s lean-to and set myself up to sleep. I mix a big dose of the deep mushroom with some of the wine and hope it will suffice to help me sleep, and stave off the madness a little longer. 

_Anders… Anders._

They know my name now, whisper it in my mind. They are not those speaking, sentient darkspawn we met so many years ago, but the ancient, screaming creatures of nightmares. But the more the taint begins to take over, the clearer and more compelling the song…

_Anders, come._

No, not even the mushroom-laced wine could truly keep them away, though they are quieter like this, their cries blunter, quieter.

_Anders, brother, come and see —_

I am unconscious before I find the bottom of the skin.

* * *

 

_ No dwarven highway, this — no, this passage was torn from stone by a thousand pairs of scrabbling, bleeding hands, slick with the trickle of ancient water. Sheer instinct drives it down into the belly of the world where the Old Gods still sleep.  _

_There is one that comes with us against his will. He has given much of his blood to the stone and yet he still struggles, still cries out. His armour and weapons — all gone, torn into pieces and divided among the Alpha. He is caked in dirt and mud. His skin is grazed from where he has been dragged along the walls._

_The passage is thinner here. We slow down, our mass of bodies crushing together, struggling through._

_He says something in a language I no longer speak and struggles free of the brothers who hold him, his fist crushing the bones of a genlock’s face. The will to survive, to escape, can lend strength to even the weakest man._

_But our purpose is clear. All should join us —_ must _join us or serve us, one way or the other. He has given up his chance to join us. We tire of his resistance, but he can still be of use. A hurlock grabs him by one shoulder and lifts him up, swinging. Once, twice into the water-slicked wall, until his screams are nothing more than a gargle_

_Nothing now but meat, this one. The ones who are born of a Mother have no need of it._

_But the ones with corruption in their blood must eat. And I have not eaten in so long, so long, so long…_

* * *

I wake, clammy with sweat, the very sight of the first rays of the sun turning my stomach. In my palms are great handfuls of grass and soil; in my mouth the taste of bile and the taste of my own blood.

What will become of Justice in the shell of a ghoul? We are fused now, but what then?

What would a ghoul do, as an abomination? What could it see the power of the Fade within it?

* * *

On the second day after leaving the ship I come across a little town, barely more than a village, really. It is the early morning, quiet and still dark. I still have no map — just my old memories of the landscape around here, and this uncanny  _pull_ in my gut towards the place that I know will bring my relief. Or my end.

The corruption inside is now a constant whisper, distracting and sweet and terrifying. If I am to go into the earth then it is time for me to find weapons. If I go unarmed I risk the . A knife, a short sword? And a staff — anything that helps provide the focus necessary to cast again. 

There is a tavern on the side of the road, still quiet. The smell of baking bread would be the give-away that someone is awake, but I smell nothing but dawn air.

It doesn’t take much to get the kitchen door to open. There’s a cloak and a belt beside it, and some sturdy boots — just a little too large for me, but they’ll do. Some cooking knives rest in a leather wrap on the bench. I can scarcely believe my fortune.

I reach behind the cloak and pull out the belt. There’s a short, sturdy dagger, and a pouch of something soft. Maybe elfroot or spindleweed. I may as well take the whole belt at this rate.

I don’t hear the landlady as she pads downstairs, but I certainly do when she sees me and screams. A man barges past her — a guest, lover, husband, does it even matter?

“Oy!”

I keep my grasp on the dagger and belt and run for it, and he crashes out of the tavern and begins to chase me down. I have only a few seconds’ head start.

Behind me are the man’s footfalls, the landlady’s piercing screams turning into a string of colourful Nevarran curses. Ahead, the morning’s birds fly up and out of the grass and trees.

I run blindly into the trees at the side of the road.

“You fuckwit!” my pursuer screams, and plunges into the forest after me.

I scramble up the hillside, the better to try and find some higher ground. My breath comes fast and burns my lungs. But he is tall, and he knows this ground, and he can outrun me so easily. His footfall is so close. There’s no way I can lose him from here.

I reach for a fallen branch and clutch it, and instinct drives me to begin casting a spell that will freeze him, hold him, pushing away, anything. The grass and leaves around me begin to flutter away. The man stops short and stares.

“Apostate?” he says, and the expression on his face travels clearly from disbelief through surprise and then bloody determination. I would have been able to incinerate him where he stood, once upon a time.

But that focus won’t come — can’t come — and the energy dissipates pointlessly with a crackle and thump into the earth around me.

So he runs forward, that brave, stupid man, and slams his huge square fist into the side of my head.

* * *

The town’s prison is some long-dead bann’s old root and wine cellar, far underground, converted into six miserable cells. I can no longer see the light, no longer sleep properly to help measure the hours. There are meals of tepid gruel, pushed through the bars, that I largely ignore. I can sense, maddeningly close, the song of the earth, the call of the stone…

“Templars will be on their way,” the constable assures me. “Always are, every couple days. You won’t have long to wait.”

Oh, anything. Anything but this. I would rather die. I would prefer to kill myself before I let them do the job for me.

But that part of my soul that is Justice now would never let me, not now that circumstance dictates one last confrontation with our most hated oppressors. If I cannot answer the call of the taint then I will allow myself one last attempt, one last moment of allowing the spirit of Vengeance to tear my skin and spill the Fade into the air.

Sometime after my fourth untouched meal a prison guard laughs and bangs his blackjack against the thick steel bars on the doors of the cells. “Get up, get up, get up,” he calls. “You all got to muster outside in a moment.”

I hear the other prisoners stretching and shuffling. “Maker’s fucking ball sack, what is it?” one of them grumbles.

“You shut it,” the guard retorts, punctuating the thought with another rattle of his weapon on the bars.

When he is ready to pull me out of my cell I make no move to struggle, though of course he shoves me anyway. I stumble up the cellar stairs and out into the hard, bright Fereldan sunlight, dazzled and disoriented. No chains, just thick rope knotted firmly around our forearms and again around our waists. It’s to stop us from struggling, yes, but also stops me from being able to keep balance while I’m being pulled around like this, and I crumple down onto both knees when he lets me go.

“A mage,” the guard says by way of introduction.

“This one is sick,” one of the younger ones says, the disdain evident in his tone. “Look. His eyes are like piss in snow.”

“You have such a way with words, Shoemaker,” the leader says.

“Look at him,” Shoemaker repeats.

“Yes, I see,” she says testily, and walks back to the others. “Now, as I was saying. If you volunteer you will be released to our custody where you will accompany us to our Keep, there to undergo a rite of joining,” the young woman finishes. “If you are successful, then you will become a full member of our order, your crimes pardoned…”

_Joining?_

_These are Grey Wardens?_

“Wait,” I say softly, and Shoemaker looks around.

“Ah, not you,” he says. “Look, mate, I’m sorry, but—“

“No, no. Stop. You’re Wardens, aren’t you? Please, I’m already one of you.”

“You what?” The other young Warden stops and wheels around and I guess from the slight lilt in her voice and her bare feet that she must be an elf. “One of us?”

“What is it?” says another voice, and it tickles something in my memory, something I haven’t heard in a long time…

“This prisoner reckons he’s a Warden, ser,” answers the prison guard.

The third Warden comes closer. I’m still on my knees, shaking and weak, cringing from the midmorning sun, and all I see is his leather boots as he stops in front of me.

“Look at me,” he says, a gloved hand rough on my shoulder.

I turn my face up, as ordered, up into the painful sun.

“This one comes with us,” he says.

And my vision clears just long enough to recognise the face of Nathaniel Howe.


	2. Capture

**Nathaniel Howe**

Amaranthine is just like any port town — a place where rumours gather and muddle and merge. 

Ships come in with their stories, swap them with traders from the land caravans bound for the inland regions. Everyone leaves with something new, or perhaps an embellishment for an old favourite. Old stories get new costumes, new characters, new lives. Stories are as prized as news about trade routes or political adventures. Stories are currency for travellers in search of a hot meal or a cold ale.

Everyone has heard at least one story about what happened in Kirkwall, in some form or another. At first, a trickle, then a steady stream of it, all roughly following the same basic lines, even if the details had been smeared by being passed along from ship to tavern to trader to bard. 

Some say that it was fire, others magic. Some insist that no mortal being could have produced such a force, that the only rational explanation is some unusual form of lightning. Some say that rogue followers of the Qun, having been tossed out of the city years ago, had come back to the city to use their terrible black powder for revenge. 

Some tell the story that the mages staged an uprising to escape the Chantry once and for all. Some think it was the Chantry themselves, and their templars, creating this atrocity to justify all these things they want to do to the mages.

Some say, in lowered, darkened voices, that the entire city has been going mad now for years, that there is _something_ wrong with it. They say that the natural order of things can only be restored with fire and destruction, that the hand of the Maker himself is behind it all.

And of those who left, so few came to poor Ferelden. They saw nothing here for them, not in that muddy, poor, Blight-scoured country which had given them so many unwanted refugees just a few short years before. Those people who tell these stories in our taverns and markets have heard these things third- or fourth-hand, and if there is anyone present who who might have actually been there, they never speak up to set the record straight.

No, not even me, when I hear it. But I know Kirkwall, and I saw what happened there.  

* * *

The question we had was simple: what did the Deep Roads hold there, so far beneath the surface of the earth? For Marian Hawke and her companions it had been riches, and a near escape. For us it was just more questions, and the loss of some good sisters and brothers. The First Warden offered me a good-sized share in the salvage in exchange for investigating these places — it was not the value in coin that intrigued me, so much as the prospect of finding lost dwarven artefacts to trade with Orzammar, and for the sake of our continued goodwill with the kingdom I agreed.

It was the Champion herself who had come to find us, her famed sword at her back, and not a moment too soon as I found. You hear stories everywhere about her, too, and surprisingly most of them aren’t wrong —  from her otherworldly blue eyes, to her skill with a blade, to her choice in companions.

We had many long hours to talk as we left those roads and made our way back to the surface, to Kirkwall. I asked her, of course, where she had come by those ways into the Roads, for I had believed that only a Grey Warden would have been able to guide their expedition as far as they’d gone. But Hawke would smile, and say only that her source preferred to stay discreet, and I could think of no honourable way to convince her to reveal her sources. To her very great credit, she did return the maps — although having had many years to have a mapmaker re-draw them for her, or even to memorise them, I’m sure that the gift to us was no great loss for her.

But I was to find that this would not be the first time I would draw my bow for the Champion of Kirkwall.

* * *

The ride home is slower, as it always is when one is burdened by a wagon full of recruits. The horses grow more tired. The food is always worse.

We make camp in a shaded place, and the other recruits jump gratefully out of the back of the wagon to stretch their legs. I trust that they won’t try to make a run for it, but I also take some heart knowing that Shoemaker is a good and fast draw on his bow, and Vaniel with a slingshot.

Anders makes no move at all — just remains in the back of the wagon, head bowed, his arms resting loosely on his knees. I tie the horses to a tree and then come back, jumping up into the wagon to sit alongside him.

Maker, he looks like death.

“Anders.”

He looks up, his gaze dull, fixed on some point in the centre of my chest instead of into my face. “Where are you taking me?” he whispers.

“To the Vigil.”

“No.”

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t. You could let me go.”

“You know why I can’t do that.” 

He draws a ragged breath, almost as if he’s holding back tears, and nods in the direction of the others. “Do they know?” 

“No. I haven’t told them.”

“They must be wondering, though.”

“Let them,” I say bluntly. Let them imagine what they like. Jan Shoemaker is fond of inventing stupid stories for telling around campfires. Vaniel has a more sensible head on her shoulders. The recruits are all more preoccupied with their own good fortune than that of some poor, sick man who is surely not so far from the end of his life. 

Let them come up with something that sounds about right.

Because I’m sure that whatever they come up with — even Shoemaker’s idiot contrivances — can be no more fantastic, or more damaging, than the truth.

* * *

I stayed in Kirkwall for a time after leaving the Deep Roads. Delilah — sweet Delilah, who refused to give up while we were missing — we stayed in a small home, a residence of one of her husband’s repeat suppliers so generously loaned to her. There is not a single time in my life that I can recall where I got along so well with her as I did those days. As children we had been so obnoxious to one another, and we’d lost touch when I was a squire here in the Free Marches, and then … well, then Father, and everything after. My nephew Nicholas was there, the perfect image of we Howe children, all straight black hair and given to moods. Being thoughtful, perhaps, is more of the right phrase for that boy. How I wonder, sometimes, if things could have been different, if I had merely slipped into the relative obscurity of living as a trader, a peasant.

The First Warden sent his messengers to meet me, to gather up what I had learned about the Deep Roads. We met halfway in a village’s tavern. No livery, no gryphons to cause rumours or attract the curious. Just a group of old friends catching up over ale and talking about old times.I was surprised not to be hauled over the coals about how Hawke had come by the maps, herself, though we wondered idly. None of Stroud’s lot, surely. None in Ferelden, as we are so few. The maps themselves were old, the maker’s mark worn away — or perhaps deliberately removed. All’s well, as they say, that ends well.

The day I came back to Kirkwall the very air was heavy, sticky with humidity, and Delilah and Nicolas had long since left for Amaranthine, and all I longed for was to follow and return home — to the Vigil, and to Léonie, and to get away from this strange and angry place. There was something in the air that day, something that was clearly unsettled, a terrible restlessness on everyone — from the lowest beggars to the templars to the stallholders, everyone held their breath and waited for whatever it was to happen.

And happen it did.

I had bought passage on a ship to Amaranthine, the fastest there was, and to the void with the expenses. Stroud and some of his favourite young proteges were in the city and I’d arranged to meet them before I left, to gather together as brothers and sisters, and to  honour the ones who had gone with me to the Deep Roads and would never come back. It was a quiet affair in the back of some less well-known tavern, the venue chosen specifically for its quietness.

We were part way through our third ales when the very earth seemed to heave, and shook anything that wasn’t nailed to the wall onto the floor. A barkeep on the way to our table with a platter of something dropped the contents, screaming. A loud, unnatural roar and a tone unlike anything I ever heard came from outside. We all dropped our ales and ran out into the Lowtown streets to see what was the matter.

You could see it in the sky, smeared with a terrifying pink smoke, and a sound that roared and half-sang like a great shield had been struck in a battle.

“Maker, preserve us all,” was all Stroud said, and a thousand pieces of stone and burning timber finally began to fall to the earth. 

We Wardens are sworn to do what’s needed, and so we did: Stroud and his Wardens with his dagger and sword, I with a bow. People streamed out of Hightown, down the hill, away from the looming column of smoke, and we knew that our duty was to go in the wrong way, towards the fighting. We knew we had found the right place when we rounded the corner to find Marian Hawke, leading a small band of fighters, getting ready to take the fight elsewhere.

The Chantry, gone — unthinkable. Everyone in it, gone too. Faces streaked with tears everywhere you looked. People fleeing their homes, arms filled with papers, children, books and beloved things. 

I am still a Howe, as thoroughly Fereldan as mabari shit, but the Marches had been my home once, too. And more — I owed Hawke my life, and she called on us to help now, and so I followed them unreservedly. Guardsmen, elves, humans. Hawke’s dwarf friend, the one with the crossbow, looked up and grinned. “You sure picked a good time to repay your debts, Grey Warden,” he said.

We fought through a city going mad, a city that could have so easily burned itself into ash that day. I lost sight of the group near the Gallows. I didn’t see Hawke again. There are so many stories about what happened there, all of them fanciful, and yet none of them seem out of the realms of possibility. Not for her. 

As for us, Stroud lost three good men that day, and I earned a biting wound to the back of my drawing hand that took a week to even start to heal properly, and it still doesn’t feel right to this day. 

When the worst of the outrage was over and I was finally ready to leave I had taken lodging in a wharfside tavern and waited for a berth to become available. I was fortunate enough to receive a visit at the dockside from Hawke’s friend, the one with the crossbow. Varric, he reminded me.

“I wanted to come thank you personally,” he said, pulling a pair of small ceramic cups from the pocket of his coat. From another pocket he took out a squat flask of something and poured a generous helping for each of us, then handed me one.

“That’s for sipping,” he warned. “At least, it is until you get used to it.”

“Thank you, serah,” I told him, and took the smallest of sips. He wasn’t exaggerating. 

He filled me in on the news that he had, the changes that he’d seen. I asked the question that we all had and he gave me a good, hard look, and dropped his voice.

“Templars are out on every road and turning over every home. If Blondie isn’t dead by now, he won’t be far off.”

“What did you call him?”

“Blondie? Cause of his blond hair. Went by Anders.”

The world stopped there for a moment.

“An apostate mage called Anders?” I echoed. 

Something clicked into place. _An apostate mage called Anders._

“Hawke had Grey Warden maps, didn’t she?”

Varric gave me a look, one of dawning realisation, and then sighed. “I think that I will have to pour you another drink.”

It took us half the flask to get through the whole story.

* * *

You could not possibly imagine the uproar that will follow if the world learns that a Grey Warden was the one who brought about the Chantry’s destruction. Indeed, I don’t believe it’s an if. I think it can surely only be a matter of time, and the idea of it thoroughly terrifies me. 

No one will care that he’d abandoned us so long ago. They will care only that we allowed someone into our ranks who took a spirit into him, willingly became an abomination, and brought about the single most disastrous event since the last Archdemon himself climbed out of his sleeping place, there in the dark and terrible stone.

Still a secret, yes. But perhaps a more open one than we realised.

And now, to find he’s still alive? That we had been deceived?

* * *

At night Anders doesn’t sleep so much as _exists_ in a half-way dreaming state _,_ wrapped in a bedroll, the visions of his calling too hard to ignore, now. Shoemaker watches him, sidelong and quiet, his smart mouth silent for once. Vaniel asks, straight up — only doing so when she’s sure the recruits won’t see, because she is the more wise one out of those two.

“Is this _it_?”

“What?” I hedge.

“You know. The Calling.” She jerks her chin towards him. “This is how it happens?”

“For some,” I say quietly.

She looks at him, long and careful. “How long has he got?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did he leave?”

_Maker’s arse, woman._ “Years ago. A team of Wardens went out one day and never came back, and then we heard about a forest fire…”

I had gone myself. I saw the ashes, the felled trees.

“We thought he was dead.”

“If he ran away,” she says, her lip curled, “then doesn’t that make him a deserter? Why should we help him through this?”

“And yet, he is still our brother,” I say. Always our brother, even if I almost don’t recognise him any more.  “We will take him with us, and then… and then, I think the Warden-Commander will decide what to do.”

“Brothers shouldn’t leave you that way.”

“They shouldn’t leave you to die in a prison, either.”

She makes a derisive sound and goes off to her tent, and I look back at Anders. His whole body shivers, though I am sure he’s not cold. _Can’t_ be cold. Can he? The taint should be burning him up.

I go to him and put a hand, quickly, to his cheek — yes, cold, though I’ve no idea how — and he startles out of whatever it is that’s consuming his thoughts. He lets out a long sigh, as though he’d been concentrating a great deal.

“Nathaniel,” he says.

“It’s just me.”

“Good,” he says, “good.” 

Waking him seems to have already stopped the shaking. He sits upright, the thin wool blanket still tucked around him, slow-moving like someone who is sick and old.

“What is it like?”

He looks at me, eyes inky black in the dark. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

“When was the last time you had the dreams?”

I think back. It was not on the road, so… “A month, I think.”

“So. Imagine having that dream every time you sleep. And every time you close your eyes, and every time you look out to the horizon. Every face you see, turning grey.”

I have nothing to say to this.

Anders lies back down, and falls back into that silent state of his. I leave him be and return to my place by the fire, its last little dregs barely smouldering enough to make light or keep me warm.

Just my thoughts now, and above us the cold sky and the clouds moving dimly across the face of the land.

This will be me one day. This will be all of us in this camp, if by the Maker’s will we do not die by the sword first. And it will come to all the Wardens at the Vigil. Even the King and Queen themselves one day.

Even Léonie.

Léonie, becoming sick and pale and withdrawn. Taking her sword on her back for the last time. Choosing a new arl or arlessa for Amaranthine. Tying her hair up one last time, making that journey. 

We all know that when the calling begins it is time to go — not later, not weeks later like this. We have all come to terms with it in our own way. But to be denied that peace?

How I ache to be home.


	3. Judgment

**Léonie Caron**

The Maker curse all paperwork and those who inflict it upon his poor servants.

I have an office, of course, adjoining my quarters, but the long map table in the library is the only place that can accommodate these blasted treasury ledgers. And despite all of Mistress Woolsey’s very careful instruction, I fear that I shall never truly be able to make these endless columns and figures make sense. Garevel is a fine seneschal, as great a steward of this keep as his predecessor had been — but we are both soldiers, not book-keepers, and he hates standing over these heavy old books as much as I do. I wonder, and not for the first time, if it would be easy to pry Woolsey away from Weisshaupt once more.

A messenger appears and waits nervously in the threshold to the library, and Garevel is all too happy to put down his pencil and meet her there.

“Please tell the Warden Commander that the party from Denerim has returned,” the girl says, in her soft nervous voice.

Oh, now _that_ — that’s all the encouragement I need to forget about these numbers.

“Thank you,” he says, and hands her a copper, and then he crosses the room to the map table. “Commander—“

“Ah, Garevel, I heard,” I say, a sweetness in my heart. “Come, let us welcome them back to the Vigil.”

“I’m sure that you’ll have a lot to catch up on,” Garevel says, his tone just the right side of innocent. He spots another young page passing us in the hallway, and catches him by the elbow. “You. To the kitchens. Have some refreshments put together and sent to the Warden Commander’s office. Wine, cold meat, cheese.” Another copper from that bottomless pocket of his.

“Yes, ser,” the boy says, and sets off at a run to the kitchens.

There is ink on my hands, and I bring a rag with me to clean off what I can, wiping at it as we make our way across the keep.

There are parts of this keep that had to be rebuilt after that last great battle, their walls a little rougher and a little cleaner than the old, smoothed-off stones of the existing structures. We have both been broken and remade here, the Vigil and the Order and I. Forty Wardens live here now, and those who surround us — cooks, armoury, pages and squires. Ten more in Denerim with King Alistair and his queen Elissa. We are small, yes, but we are strong.

We make our way around the outside edge, past the new armoury, and then out into the mounting yard, and I break into a wide grin when I see they have all returned safe, and at Nathaniel most of all.

Two weeks they were gone, just that. Just a journey to our brothers and sisters in Denerim, and a little recruitment on the way, for anyone who would prefer to join with us. But we Wardens live dangerous lives, and it was not so long ago that Nathaniel had been gone for long, worrying months in the Free Marches, and I am grateful for safe travels even when the journey is small.

Besides, the days just feel _right_ with him around. Garevel is a fine seneschal, yes. But this place feels incomplete without Nathaniel.

It is rare for him to smile and I feel especially lucky to receive one, a faint little thing at the corner of his eyes and his mouth. “Several pouches from Denerim for you,” he says, handing me a group of slim, rough leather envelopes. They will be the usual business of the order, of course, although by Nathaniel’s tone I sense that there is some more to be told. Behind him, all climbing out of a wagon, are some new conscripts, all guarded and curious. And one more, his head bowed, being led away towards the little cellar we use as a dungeon.

“Trouble on the road?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he says, his eyes following the figure as he is taken into the building. And then he looks back at me, something strange and hurt in there.

“Garevel has organised something for my office. Let’s talk.”

“Yes.”

He gives me the smallest of updates on the way back — the Wardens in Denerim are also growing, a group led with some enthusiasm by the Queen herself. I am very fond of Elissa Cousland.

I close the door to my office, and very gently — so as not to make it too painfully obvious to anyone outside in the hall — I set the big wooden bolt in place with a quiet, firm _thud_.

“Something troubles you.”

“This, first,” he says, and he crosses the room with just two quick strides. Both his hands are on my waist, and he pulls me close to kiss him, long and hard and not altogether gently. There is some kind of sadness in him, some urgency in the trail of his fingertips along the planes of my waist, though I have barely a moment to wonder what it could be, distracted as I am by the sensation of his hands.

“Why, what is it, what’s happened—?”

“Shh,” he says, and pulls the hem of my shirt from my breeches.

_Oh, I see._

We know each other’s bodies as well as we know the hills and valleys of this arling, every touch of our hands travelling well-worn paths. I coax him backwards towards the desk, the better to embrace him, for he is a good deal taller than I am. It might be more civilised, perhaps, to move to my quarters in the next room, although with the urgency in his touch and his voice I don’t think that he really minds. I am eager, and quite willing, and I unlace my breeches and let my eyes flutter shut as he strokes me with the ball of his thumb, the slight roughness of his callouses a delight against my most sensitive places.

We have had years now to learn the things that bring us both pleasure. It is not long before I am whispering his name into his mouth as he _looks_ at me, looks right into my eyes, not willing to go any further until he is sure that I am satisfied. He, too, comes quickly, with a rough sound at the back of his throat, and I stroke his hair and I breathe him in — rosin and leather, the dust of the road, the heat of his skin.

“I missed you,” I tell him, when he seems sufficiently recovered.

“Forgive me,” he says.

“For what?”

He leans back a little to meet my eyes. “For my… impatience.”

“Oh, love.” In truth I enjoyed this, a little reminder of the way things were when we were somewhat younger, when we first fell for one another. “What’s gotten into you?”

He sighs and looks at me with those eyes of his, the very colour of storm clouds. “It’s good to remind yourself that you’re alive.”

“Something happened, didn’t it?”

“I need to talk with you about that prisoner,” he says.

* * *

I would never have recognised him at first, but now, to look into his face — yes, it is him. His hair is darker, dirtier. His clothes are rags. He looks like he has walked through the Void itself these last years.

“Anders?” I say, and my throat catches on the name. He drags his eyes up to meet mine, as if with a great effort. It can only be him, and yet…

“It _is_ you.”

“More or less, Caron,” he half-whispers, with the ghost of his old smile.

It tears at my heart to see him this way, so ragged and worn-out. And his skin — I am not imagining it, surely, but his skin seems paler, the veins in his arms more prominent. His eyes have begun to lighten and change. His cheeks have begun to sink into his face. I have always had a talent for sensing the taint in another, and when I concentrate on him for a moment I get that strange Warden sense of his _presence_ — the mark in all of us brothers and sisters, the same way that we can sense the ghouls and the darkspawn. He was always so vital, so strong, but he is different now, the song of his blood more like that of the nameless scrambling beasts far below us.

Unmistakable.

“How long have you known?”

“Two weeks…. No, I suppose almost three, now.”

Not long, then. I wonder how it is that he has deteriorated so quickly.

“Is it true, Anders? About Kirkwall?”

He sighs. “Does any of it matter if—”

I slap my hands against the bars and he jumps in surprise. “Of course it matters.”

Nathaniel steps forward, his voice a dangerous whisper. “You were _hours_ away from the templars, Anders, so the _least_ you can do is tell your bloody story.”

He gazes at us both. “Alright,” he says.

And tell it he does.

* * *

Sometimes the only place to find answers is far from the walls of this keep. I take a handful of arrows and a short bow. There are fast-growing pines in these areas, planted to replace the ones that had been burned away in the darkspawn assault, the ones that were lost back when we first came here. The young forest is beginning to attract birds and small animals — not so many that we can hunt here every day, but enough that we can have braised hare every now and then.

Dusk is the best time. I settle into the crook of a tree and wait, still, for something to come.

 _Anders_. That day we heard what had happened to him and his group — he and Justice had been leading them south for an investigation of a credible report of lingering darkspawn in a small town. Nothing for days, and then a messenger arrived with reports of a terrible fire and bones and the smell of death… he had come with a piece of charred armour, the silver griffon motif at its centre showing the truth of the story.

No one returned.

We mourned, of course. To lose brothers and sisters in any way is a deep tragedy. To lose Anders and Justice in particular _hurt_ in a very particular, very special way. I did more than mourn; I _grieved_.

To think that they are still alive — he is still alive — what do we call this now?

To think what he has become.

I should hang him. I really should. If not for what he did in Kirkwall, then for what he did in that forest so long ago.

But for all the things I have seen, for all the men and women I’ve put to the sword, for all the creatures I have faced in the dark — well, if you asked me to be the one to put him to death, could I do it?

If I _could_ do it, what then?

Would that silent _presence_ in him come out? Would there be a repeat of that horror that took so many from us those years ago? And what if he succumbed to the taint with such a power in him?

If I sent him to Denerim, to Kirkwall?

If I do not, and people find outt?

These are the thoughts that circulate in my mind as I watch and I wait. A hunter is patient. A hunter has time to wait.

Nathaniel appears beside me, silent.

“Have you been looking for me long?”

“First place I tried,” he says. Inside, I smile.

A pair of rabbits appear, then, lazily making their way through some soft grass. I have an arrow already held loosely in my fingers and bring it quietly, slowly to my bow, and wait until I am sure that they plan to stick around.

I nock it, draw it.

I let it go.

And the arrow strikes the rabbit a little short, a little to the right, piercing its shoulder instead of slicing neatly through its head.

_Merde._

“What have I told you about the power with that bow?” Nathaniel grumbles behind me, but I ignore him and go to the fallen rabbit. It is alive, its breath almost imperceptible and shallow, doing that trick that prey animals do when they are desperate to make the predator think that they are dead.

There is only one kindness to be done, only one right path, but as I take the little animal in my hands something flip-flops in my stomach, and I freeze up.

“What?” Nate asks.

“I just…”

There is a sob ready to fly from the back of my throat and I don’t know why this has to be so bloody _hard._

He takes the rabbit from me without a word. I look away; I know what he’s doing, and I don’t need to see.


	4. Release

**Nathaniel**

Well past midnight, and I am dozing softly, dressed in light and warm woolens, stretched out in a small chair.

Léonie pads past, her boots in one hand. “Nate,” she whispers, one hand on my shoulder. “It’s now.”

Quite. I strap two knives to my back. You can never be too sure.

* * *

The guard on night watch is easily subdued — a slab of cheese and a flask of wine, both laced with a good strong sedative, which I bring to him with a story about being unable to sleep, and hungry, and in want of company. When he wakes I will tell him that he fought bravely when that dangerous apostate he guarded cast some kind of charm on us both. I will ensure that he is paid well for enduring such a danger. His story will become a tavern favourite — for the good of this order I will make sure of this.

Anders is out of it, off with the sprites somewhere, when I let myself into his cell. I pick him up and sling one arm around my shoulders. He is as light as a boy, and I’m honestly unsure if he’s fully conscious until his bare feet hit the cold flagstones outside the prison.

“Where…”

“Ssh,” I tell him.

Down, down to the cellars underneath the Vigil, the ones that I played in so very long ago. The gateway to the Deep Roads has gone unused here for such a long time — not even all of our Wardens know of these passages’ existence. Since the end of the Blight and the passing of the Architect there has been nothing much here but quietness, and maybe the occasional blighted rat or two, caught by one of the keep’s mabari hounds. Some of the more accomplished fighters have been here, though not far.

The cellars are long, dark, damp. I struggle with a torch in one hand and the other arm supporting Anders. He is by no means a heavy man but he is weak and he struggles to keep up. But we cannot slow down.

“I’ve been here before,” he says.

“We both have, Anders. Do you remember?” 

He coughs, scratchy and weak. “Your nanny.”

“Yes. Adria.” I have thought of her much in the last day or so. Of her grey skin, of the wail in her voice. It might have been easier to have dealt with if I’d seen blind animal rage in her eyes. But it wasn’t just that.

No, there was still a flicker of recognition there, and in the end we had to do the kindest thing.

It happened right here, at the very end of the hallways, where the ancient passageways give way to hard, raw stonework.

Here, where Léonie waits with a pile of things.

A staff, discarded by one of our wardens, languishing for months on Master Wade’s rainy-day list, waiting for just the right metal sheathing to come along. He will probably have forgotten about it by now, I expect. If not I will be sure to make it up to him.

Some light leather armour, the lightest we have, barely more than leather and thick wool underlay. I remember how he hated the very idea of wearing it, but in this state — well, if he is to choose the manner of his passing, then he will have a better chance of doing so if he can protect himself.

A skin of water, and some dry provisions, for whatever good these may do him now.

The worn old coat he’d been wearing when we found him.

“You are always a Warden, Anders,” she says. “Your Joining sees to that, even if you leave us.”

He looks at it all, takes it all in.

“Why?” he says, barely audible.

“What are my alternatives?” Léonie asks.

He knows, of course. He knows what can happen.

“They will still be looking for me, you know,” he says.

“Yes.”

“What will happen if they find out that you’ve done this?”

“They will _never_ find out,” I tell him.

He is shaking — from weakness, from being near his goal at last… I don’t know.

“Find peace on the long road, brother.”

He says nothing as goes into the long night, no hesitation, not even to turn around and look.

In the dark I curl my fingers around Léonie’s and my heart aches.


	5. Epilogue

**Léonie**

Marian Hawke, with her brilliant blue eyes, with her piercing expression. No wonder they all say she is formidable, for she is certainly formidable to look at. I smile and offer her another pot of tea, and she accepts — probably more of a courtesy than from any desire to consume it, but it seems as though any Fereldan can be placated with either tea, or ale. She had been born here, she’d told me, as she sat in the cold, hard bench seat under the window, and you can certainly see it in the proud way she holds her shoulders and sets her chin, even underneath that stiff Kirkwall-styled collar.

Her requests were small: she’d heard that Anders may have come here to the Vigil, and she would like to know what happened — this delivered to us in a quiet, almost monotonous way, but underneath it the signs of a terrible hurt, and I have no doubt that if she were to ever have found him, she might well have killed him — no hesitation.

Nathaniel has done most of the speaking, owing to their friendship, strained now though it seems. The lie about the escape comes easily to both of us — perhaps even easier than when we told it to our own brethren. She is angry, though it seems not with us.

“When I asked you where you got those maps… Marian, was it Anders who gave them to you?”

“Yes.”

He sighs. “I wish you’d told me.”

“I told him I was going to look for you. He asked me not to tell you about him.”

“Why?”

“Because he told me that he wanted those days to be behind him and I saw no reason to go against it. Have you never wished for the same?”

In truth, I have. And there are many, of course, who come to us for that very reason.

But for him? I wonder if she knows about what happened when he left.

“You must have been close,” I say.

“He was my friend, my…” She trails off. “Well, _more_ than that.”

Lovers, then? I ache a little. How this whole thing must have hurt this woman. “And now?” I ask.

“There are many who seek justice, and the truth. I intend to give it to them, one way or another.”

I know that she means it, too.

Perhaps… perhaps a little more of the truth. I look to Nathaniel and he nods.

“For us,” I say, “there is a special bond we all share, more than our promise to the Order. Did he tell you about that?”

She looks down into her tea cup. “Some sort of… _calling_ thing, isn’t it? With yourselves, and the darkspawn?”

“Yes.”

Nathaniel shifts uncomfortably beside me. No surprise that Anders shared this secret with her, though it is supposed to be one of the closest guarded.

“Did he tell you what that leads to?” I ask.

“The taint? It kills you, or it… _turns_ you. Right?”

“When he came here, Marian, it was because that time had come.”

She pulls her lips into a thin, straight line, those expressive eyes of hers suddenly unreadable.

“When the taint takes someone—”

“I’ve seen it. At Lothering.”

“He would not have had long,” Nathaniel says. “He would have succumbed shortly after his escape.”

She is silent — from anger, from grief, I’m not sure.

“I’m sorry,” I add.

Well, _that_ , at least, is the unvarnished truth.


End file.
